Dr Paul Hamlyn, the Managing Director of Ore Research & Exploration Pty Ltd, took time to sit down with Metals News to discuss the range of services offered by his company to mineral explorers, miners and assayers in the resource sector and to elaborate on their latest innovation.
Ore Research & Exploration, based in Melbourne, Australia, produces Certified Reference Materials (CRMs) that are used as a quality control check for mining companies that are testing samples from an exploration or resource drilling campaign. The CRMs, or standards as they are often called, are homogeneous rock powders produced from naturally occurring precious and base metal ores. They can determine the quality of the laboratory results by comparing the assay reading to the known, accurate value of the standard. They are generally inserted into the sample stream at a frequency of one in twenty to thirty to monitor laboratory performance across the entire batch of field samples.
Hamlyn has a vast amount of geological knowledge which he uses to lead the company as the Managing Director. Said Hamlyn, “I’m a geologist. I have a PhD in igneous and metamorphic petrology and have a special interest in magmatic ore deposits, platinum in particular. We produce certified reference materials for the mineral industry for greenfields exploration through to resource definition and grade control.” The company has had a long, successful history of providing their highly regarded OREAS brand throughout the world. Hamlyn said, “We have been doing this for 25 years and export our 125 different OREAS products to over 1200 customers across 75 countries.” Ore Research and Exploration is relatively new to PDAC. Dr Hamlyn used the opportunity to highlight improved custom CRM services and new OREAS products with representatives from the mining sector. Hamlyn said, “This is our second year at PDAC. We have found that it is one of the biggest conferences globally, so it is a good place to headline our wares. We have a proud history of innovation as a CRM producer stretching back over two and a half decades. Industry firsts include:
· Introduction of single-use flexible wall packaging of CRMs
· Pioneering of the reduced subsample neutron activation analysis method to determine homogeneity in gold ore CRMs
· Guarantee of homogeneity of all precious and base metal ore CRMs
· Introduction of inert gas packaging to preserve sulphide-bearing CRMs ”
Hamlyn continued, “Our latest initiative is the development of Super CRMs. Unlike most CRMs that are certified for only a handful of analytes, our Super CRMs are certified for a range of different analytical methods and for the full suite of analytes available by modern ICP-OES, ICP-MS and XRF methods. The OREAS 900’s series copper oxide CRMs are a good illustration. They were characterized, in an interlaboratory round robin certification program comprising 19 laboratories, for 39 analytes by aqua regia digestion ICP-OES/MS and for 45 analytes by four acid digest ICP-OES/MS. Obviously, to undertake this sort of work requires very intensive geostatistical data processing capability and we have invested a great deal in this over the last two years. It’s a project we took on at the suggestion of several of the labs we work with. Labs comprise an important part of our customer base and benefit enormously from the convenience of full suite certifications of OREAS CRMs for their in-house QA/QC”.
Ore Research and Exploration offers a diverse range of CRM products that can be used for various laboratory methods to determine a baseline for testing. Said Hamlyn, “Basically, the products that we sell are rock powders containing various concentrations of gold, copper, lead, zinc and other metals that are used for quality control.” Not only are they used by mineral laboratories for method validation and instrument calibration, they are also used by mining companies who want to make sure that their assay results are not skewed beyond what is considered normal within industry standards. Said Hamlyn, “This is critical. For laboratories our samples provide assurance that their instruments are functioning correctly in their day-to-day operations, while for miners our samples provide a quality control tool to monitor their laboratory’s performance. This is of critical importance for NI43-101 and JORC compliance.” The company offers a wide variety of precious and base metal CRM samples that can be used for comparison. Hamlyn said, “We have reference materials for gold, copper, nickel, zinc, silver, uranium, tungsten, rare earth elements, and iron ore – most of the elements.”
In addition to providing comparison samples for laboratories to use in testing, Ore Research and Exploration frequently provides samples to individual companies that are sending samples in to a laboratory for testing. Why would a mining company send certified samples to a lab? Hamlyn explained, “If you have a drilling program and you are submitting gold samples for analysis, one in twenty or thirty will be our reference materials.” Critical to the process is not telling the lab that a certified sample is included in the batch. Hamlyn said, “The lab won’t know our samples are in there.” Once the testing is complete, the mining company will have a good idea if the laboratory has done the work they were hired to do or if the results are suspect. Said Hamlyn, “The company will immediately know if the assay results are accurate.” For companies who are involved in exploration, project development or production, knowing that the samples have been accurately tested can give them confidence and add value when selling their product or their project to potential clients or financiers. With the help of Ore Research and Exploration, companies can have confidence that the assay results they communicate are accurate. If the assay values returned by the laboratory fall outside acceptable performance criteria for the CRM in question, then the geologist can get to work rectifying the situation. Said Hamlyn, “When the results come back, then the geologist can determine if there is high or low bias in the CRM samples. They provide quality control over assays.” The other market for Ore Research and Exploration is commercial mineral laboratories that need comparison samples to use in testing. Hamlyn said, “We also sell to labs to help them with their own calibration and method validation. They purchase our ready-made OREAS CRMs or get us to make large custom batches for use globally across all their labs.”
In general, Ore Research and Exploration works in two areas of the business: ready to use OREAS CRM products and custom (mine or matrix-matched) CRMs from client supplied materials. There are over 125 different OREAS products in common use throughout the world. The company also provides custom CRMs to help companies that have deposits with unusual metallurgy or grades, or for which existing CRMs are unsuited. Said Hamlyn, “We have two streams to our business. People can buy ready-made CRMs off the shelf or we can produce custom CRMs from any style of mineralisation from material sourced from anywhere in the world. It’s a widely held misconception, propagated by some of our less competent competitors, that custom CRMs cannot be produced to the same quality of commercially available CRMs. Importantly, we provide a guarantee on the homogeneity of all custom CRMs we prepare, including those sourced from nuggety gold ores.”
Ore Research and Exploration has a long list of clients, including many of the major mining corporations that work all over the globe. As part of their normal course of business, their major clients send them large samples of materials that need to be tested and certified. Hamlyn said, “It is not uncommon for us to receive a five or ten ton airfreight shipment from a major to our headquarters in Melbourne.” The major companies work in some of the most profitable areas of mining. Said Hamlyn, “We work with all of the majors. Gold is a big part of it.” In addition to work in the gold sector, Ore Research and Exploration works with other materials as well, including some that he refers to as the “flavor of the month.” Said Hamlyn, “We do a lot of iron ore, copper, rare earth elements, and graphite. All the flavors of the month. We are doing a lot of graphite work right now.”
Companies who are interested in Ore Research and Exploration’s products in North America can also get them locally, through a distributor located in Canada. Hamlyn said, “We have a reseller in Toronto called Analytical Solutions headed by Lynda Bloom. They have been selling our products for about twelve years. Our samples are distributed through the US, South America and Canada as well. I guess we have a great reputation. We have over 1200 global clients.”
http://www.ore.com.au/
ORE Research & Exploration Pty Ltd
37A Hosie Street Bayswater North
Vic 3153 Australia
Tel: +61 3 9729 0333
Fax: +61 3 9761 7878
info@ore.com.au